babycake

I've always wanted to bike, and the city finally said yes, let's make the city bike-friendly.

And then they go ahead and just paint a white bike lane right next to the car lane. Yea, even when politicians listen to their constituents, they just half ass the effort.

I'm not risking my life to ride in that bike lane, so I still use a car.

I don't think people are dumb though. Most working class people see through the BS because they live it everyday. I'm not talking about just us, I'm talking retail, waiters, miners, etc. They've seen way more shit with their bosses and life experiences to know what's what.

I don't think it's infantilizing. I think since these major news sites are owned and backed by the rich, they have certain messages they want to push. And one idea they don't want people to know about is worker organization. The rich all have a vested interest to not mention it at all and instead want us to use their rigged process to resolve issues.

Here's an interesting video that shows every news station saying the exact same thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI

Of course, it depends on the person. If the person doesn't want lunch, and the boss keeps singling you out to go, that kinda disrespects you. And vice versa.

People are not all the same. Some people are shy, some people are gregarious. Respect their nature, that's it. When someone who has power over you just disregards you as a person, that's both not professional AND abusive if it happens over and over again. It's not a hard concept to get.

That could be considered harassment, yea. There was a dude who told his boss he didn't want a birthday party due to anxiety and his boss ignored him and just went ahead and did it anyway.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61141421

He got a 450$ million payout after the employee sued.

All these big publishers always parrot the same, 'just go to HR' as though that'll solve your problem. HR has always been the legal shield of the company; they exist to shield the company.

one option is to take the issue to HR, especially if the perpetrator is a boss. Although speaking up takes courage, Sharma advises people do it sooner rather than later “so that matters can be treated with a sense of urgency, and they don't impact your mental wellbeing in the long term”.

Yea, that's just gonna get you fired depending on how severe the accusations are, and whether the person being accused has clout within upper management. If your boss is friends with the big boss, guess whose ass HR is gonna can?

Sadly, every time these articles come out from these big publishers, none of them suggest worker organization. That's the best way to fight back against these toxic practices, look how much worker benefits we've gotten over the back of dead workers just by banding together and pushing back: fire exits, reduced work hours, no child labor, etc.

That's absolutely false. Bullying doesn't have to be just physical abuse, everything you listed definitely counts. While you don't have to be 'friends' with people at work, that's kind of irrelevant. Why not ask why this behavior is even acceptable in the first place, especially when work is supposed to be a professional environment?

My confusion is that if I have 10 GB of photos in my Google Photos, that counts towards the Google cloud storage. Gmail contents also contribute to the total cloud storage. So if Google Takeout is taking my 10 GB photos and creating 10 GB zip files for download, where is it gonna store those zip files? If I sent it to my gmail, doesn't that mean I'll get 10 GB of new zip files that takes up my gmail storage space?

If I send it to my Google Drive, then those 10 GB zip files take up my drive storage space... So Google Photos + zip files... that's 20 GB. Double the storage right? And if I don't have enough space to store those zip files, then I'll have to upgrade my storage space and pay more money...?

Where is Google Takeout storing those zip files if not on my storage space?

Yea I mean it's good advice to get a lawyer, but imagine you had to do that for every job offer. You'd be spending so much upfront just to get a job. And they don't even reimburse you for the cost of the modified contract from the hired lawyer if you accept.

Wait really? I can't download my original file? Is there official docs on this, I couldn't find it on google. Instead I had to find it on here:

https://www.theverge.com/22440156/google-photos-download-sav...

Now you get to choose from a variety of different options: Whether you want your data to be emailed to you as an attachment or sent to Drive, OneNote, Dropbox, or Box;

So does this mean I'll need DOUBLE the storage space in my google cloud just to download my photos in original quality?

What kind of horrible dark pattern is this... We need to raise hell on this issue, it's so ridiculous.

Ah yes, the Shitlassian story. Read up on it here if you don't know about it: https://shitlassian.com/

What about your college degree on your resume? Don't you have to list the year you graduated? Even job portals that make everyone fill the damn web forms manually, it generally always asks when one graduated.

From that they can deduce your age?

So do sellers who got scammed by Opendoor get any kind of reimbursement? Or does FTC dust off their hands and call it a day?

Was the cancellation message only deceptive in Australia? Or is it everywhere, and Australia is the only country to prosecute?

As part of the severance plan for the over 2,800 laid off employees, Pelton is offering a curious benefit: A membership to Peloton.

Is that it? There's nothing more in their severance? I wish the article would explain this more.

I should clarify this behavior is mostly at larger companies... and although it's my anecdotal piece, it is what I've consistently seen at different companies and what my friends tell me they've experienced at other large companies. I've also worked at smaller places and this behavior was not as prevalent since everyone knows everyone on the dev team.

Also, at larger companies your manager tends to reorg. I've gone through 5 managers in a single year before. And with them goes all the goodwill you built up during that time. New manager comes in, and it basically resets your 'perception' factor. The old manager might tell the new manager that some people are good, but you have to get lucky to get the new manager to care, because they haven't seen the results with their own eyes yet. That small time window is when it's ripe for someone to swoop in and claim ownerships of projects, while smooching up to the new manager. That's what happened with the senior dev I saw, but he had aces up his sleeves. What an epic showdown.

Yea, I should leave probably, but it's just one burning ship to another. That's our fundamental reality.

To be honest, I don't think this is any of the engineer's fault. I think we're an open creature by nature; we like to share and explore ideas with others.

In the corporate field, what I've observed is that deliveries are most important. Not just any deliveries, but the project has to be big and "impactful" (as in, other teams use it too), and you personally have to own it. Like your name has to be attached to it. No one is going to remember your tiny fixes here and there, or tiny feature implementations in the larger system, even if it's tracked in sprint. All that stuff gets looked down upon as just 'doing your job'.

To get any kind of recognition and ultimately, a promotion (or better raise, better rating, better bonus, etc), we absolutely have to clam up and take entire ownership of the work. If that's not done, other people can swoop in and steal the work. Things become need-to-know basis for your other fellow devs, design meetings is just you leading them and asking if this is fine, etc. Everyone has to know you're leading the project, and you have to constantly enforce that knowledge to put down any attempt at a takeover.

I've personally witnessed this happening to an older and more senior dev when a college graduate tried to assert himself on the team until the senior dev fought back with office politics.

In the end, office politics is what matters, along with your work to back up your office political agenda. Another senior dev could come in and take your project, claim your code is terrible and needs a rewrite, etc. You can only win if the boss is on your side, and that requires you to take on more than you can chew (and of course, deliver it all) to get on the boss's good side.

Imagine if we didn't have that kind of pressure of delivery in the workplace just to get recognition. The first example that comes to mind is Open source work. People just contribute, we share and deliver openly, and as a result community projects grew so big our entire corporate infrastructure became dependent on it.

For sure, but companies didn't win by building a better product. They won because of copyright laws that helped them to enforce their goal of profits.

If we want computing freedom, or in other words: consumer rights, then we need to enact laws that are pro-consumer to ensure an open future. Things like being able to repair our devices were taken away (Apple) and brought semi-back with right-to-repair laws (albeit only proposed atm), ownership of software and your data taken away by online services (Adobe, etc), and lots others.

Having open source hardware won't stop companies trying to take control away. We already see Microsoft and their SecureBoot problems with Linux. Or maybe they just won't support those open source machines by refusing to deploy their OS or whatever. Then what audience are you gonna have to make that product successful to become the new standard?

Laws are the only way to force everyone to play nice. We can have the nicest open source stack, but that's nothing if companies can just seize them with their own laws.

So for regular users, does this mean my google docs, sheets, photos will be gone? What is G Suite vs Workspace? Or will all my docs be ported over and I'll still have access?

We can infer from labor history itself. All of our benefits today came from workers who lost their lives in fighting for better working conditions.

But even if we don't look at history, the fact that all companies worldwide consistently unite together against this one issue (unions), as well as spending millions to counter it, should make any employee suspect. In contrast to millions of dollars lost due to bad CEO leadership or fraud, employee attrition/retraining, managers favoring nepotism, etc. Curious how they don't unite to fix that stuff when it plagues all companies just as hard.

Unlimited Vacation is great if there is a base guarantee of vacation given to the employees. That is, give them their usual 2 weeks (or more) of PTO in their contract. Then anything on top of that is unlimited.

But companies know full well what they're doing. They know that if they replace guaranteed PTO with unlimited, not only does the employee take less vacation (more bang for the company's buck), but they also get to skirt around state laws on paying for unused PTO when the employee quits.

Plus, without any guaranteed PTO, companies can just decline your request for vacation any time. They can say they're in busy season, or they need office coverage, whatever. Whereas with guaranteed vacation, the manager would have a harder time declining those hours you earned due to bad optics.

Unlimited vacation without a guaranteed PTO base is a scam.

Or maybe he was asking why engineers were paid so low compared to blue collar jobs. If our work is valued the same as bus drivers, then ok, he should switch careers. But if it's not valued the same, as HN frequently demonstrates with its discussions boasting about massive dev salaries, your colleague is rightly asking why engineers are paid so low compared to bus drivers.

Which camp are you in? Either way, maybe it's time for a tech union, clearly these workers at Kellogg and other industries are getting their demands met. Why aren't we?

“The almost one million UAW retirees and active members stand in solidarity with the striking UAW members at John Deere,” UAW President Ray Curry said.

Pretty awesome, retirees coming back to help out exploited workers. Imagine what better benefits and working hours Tech can have if we also did this.

And that's why tech needs a union. You'll always lose as an employee, on your own.

They get to continue suppressing current and future employees.

Here's a perfect illustration: You know that recent article that came out about Google not paying their temp employees fairly? Well were you aware of that problem before that article came out? If not, apparently full time Google employees weren't either and are now organizing to fix that.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/15/google-un...

It's win-win for employees to go public.

There is no accrued vacation ok... but he is supposed to get 'unlimited' vacation days, right? So if you take that word 'unlimited' at face value, that means he should be able to take some days off to take care of his wife.

Unlimited PTO is part of his compensation package for working at this company, so while he didn't 'accrue' vacation in the traditional sense, he's still entitled to his PTO.

So in the end, it doesn't matter whether he accrued them or not, his PTO is his to use. And he was denied that.

He even stated that his manager was the one who stated to him that he had at least 20 days off:

When I joined, my manager told me exactly how many days I have: "federal holidays + 20 days", which is considered "quite generous for the US" (exact quotes)

So it's not even on him that he thinks he's earned 20 days.

What difference does it make if he 'earned' his PTO vs using his 'unlimited' PTO? I don't understand why this distinction is being made in the context of the article. If it's just to say that companies can deny PTO because it's not federally protected, well, that's an even bigger problem. Maybe it should right? Either way it makes the company look bad.

What a weird perspective this is. There is a man whose wife is dying. He needs support from his employer because that's what's paying the bills for the food, shelter, and medical bills that pile up while he's taking care of her. He's put in all his time and effort into helping the company succeed, now he's asking for some leeway when shit hit the fan for him.

It's so pedantic to then point to these random rules, which are specifically designed to screw the employee over, and then say 'welp, those are the rules, too bad'. It also goes against the company mantra, of putting your health before the company (as he states in the article).

The guy in the article even stated:

- No, it's not even a question, because you won't be using it as a vacation, right? Technically you won't be on PTO, so take a medical leave.

It sounds very touching, but I didn't recognize the trick here. They wanted me to use my medical leave, because they didn't want to pay for the PTO I earned.

The point here is that the company didn't want to pay the guy for his hard-earned PTO. They pulled out all the stops to avoid paying him. They instead wanted to give him unpaid medical time off. Then they said they couldn't approve PTO because they didn't have enough office coverage, yet his boss took a month off.

So why can't he use his PTO? That's his money, his wife is dying, and his mental and physical health is at an all time low. Let him use his damn PTO.

Employers have deep pockets. They'll win over your legal counsel by dragging it out for years, making you bankrupt.

At least by exposing it publicly, the company is now forced to address the issue in front of... well everyone. And, other people can see if they've been screwed over as well. After decades and decades of employees trying to resolve matters internally and quietly, and just getting retribution, does anyone actually think being quiet is still the way to go?

I mean, that's how #metoo got started, by going public and getting people together to push back on corporate BS. Same applies here, and for all corporate issues.

Don't work as hard as you're doing at work. You're giving your employer all your creative and mental energy. This is the source of why you feel drained. If you don't fix this, it will eventually lead to burnout down the road (it could take a few years). All the other solutions are just hacks and workarounds while working 200% at your job. Those won't address the core of your problem.

Focus on your GF and personal experiences, your work will never treat you as humanely as life. You only live once, enjoy it!

In all honesty, I feel your pain. But we are regular people who have to work for a living, we have little control over how society is run despite the 'democratic' process in place. What you are describing is part of the leakage of this process... where taking a closer look would show you how corrupt and fake everything is.

This kind of thing, where the consumer is screwed and the richer party wins is not unique to these neo-banks... It's companies and politicians in general... or in other words, rich people in general.

You can see other pain points in any industry in our society that match your experience:

- People going through mountains of paperwork and getting dropped calls to the unemployment office, waiting for their life-saving covid checks (some people haven't even received the first one yet)

- People getting beaten and screwed over by cops. Citizen complaints are dropped and officers never punished. Screwed over people don't even get their compensation back if they are wrongfully put in jail for a few days, the system just shrugs and says too bad. Only in the serious cases where a scapegoat is needed to cops get punished (ie, George Floyd, but no lasting permanent change in law to change cop behavior)

- Insurance companies, Verizon/Comcast, Wells Fargo, etc all screw over consumers with ridiculous rates, incorrect charges on billing statements. What can the consumer do, other than to connect with a customer service agent from a foreign country that just reads a prewritten script? Has anyone here fought with insurance? Takes months just to get anything acknowledged and rectified... The whole process is designed to make consumers give up and pay than fight back.

- PIP (see Amazon's hire-to-fire policy), abusive toxic teams, sexual harassment, etc that regular workers face every day... who do they get to report that to? Generally if someone speaks up they get fired in at-will states almost immediately (also, think about how at-will employment came about... hint: companies lobbied for it).

- Government/corporate whistleblowers get screwed over. Despite the fact there is a great monetary reward given by some entity (ie, IRS for tax whistleblowers), has anyone actually looked at how difficult it is to get that reward paid out? A few people have gotten it, but most people just get screwed over and their life ruined. This is by design.

- Pharma companies that buy and increase prices on life-saving drugs for no reason other than to make money. What recourse do people have, other than to beg their insurance to help cover the new cost, or die?

- What protections does the consumer have when their flight is delayed, or their suitcase is lost? You're gonna maybe get some cash, but your vacation is ruined... you'd have to spend a day or two just shopping to rebuy all the things you lost like your toothbrush, shirts and underwear, etc... Your hard earned PTO that you worked a year or more for just gone to waste.

The problems... are just everywhere. And honestly it's all by design and I'm not sure if it can be fixed without solidarity from the people. If you look closely, you'll see that in the end it's all about preserving the cash that the rich people are making. Trying to get it back from the rich, they make it exceptionally difficult, but possible. And that's the key, from their descriptions on return policy, and whatever to get your money back, it seems reasonable on paper. The common theme is in practice, it's pretty difficult. The king of france didn't get his head axed by one person... but how would you organize people such that they don't get pounded by big media with fake news that support the rich people's agendas... since you know, they kinda own the media outlets. Just stuff like that... it's hard to answer your question OP if you're looking for permanent, lasting change that's beneficial to the end consumer. And with the recent gutting of the FCC and other consumer-friendly arms of the government (who do you think did this?), even your filings with these entities will probably go unnoticed. Leaking to the press is probably your best bet if you're looking for an effective solution in the present moment.

Good question though.

It means you didn't take enough of a vacation :D